Centerless grinding machines are known in the art and are used for grinding the internal surface concentric with the external surface on an annular workpiece such as, for example, a ball bearing ring or raceway.
In automatic grinding machines of this type, it is important that the loading and unloading of workpieces be effected with high accuracy and in short times. Various types of workpiece loading and unloading mechanisms have been developed in the past for centerless grinding machines as illustrated in the following U.S. patents:
U.S. Pat. No. 2,635,395 issued Apr. 21, 1953 PA0 U.S. Pat. No. 2,706,369 issued Apr. 19, 1955 PA0 U.S. Pat. No. 2,723,499 issued Nov. 15, 1955 PA0 U.S. Pat. No. 2,754,641 issued July 17, 1956 PA0 U.S. Pat. No. 2,927,406 issued Mar. 8, 1960 PA0 U.S. Pat. No. 3,023,552 issued Mar. 6, 1962 PA0 U.S. Pat. No. 3,280,512 issued Oct. 25, 1966 PA0 U.S. Pat. No. 3,640,026 issued Feb. 8, 1972
The present invention resulted from a desire to provide a significant improvement over presently available centerless grinding machines having automatic workpiece loading, grinding and unloading features.